Following last week’s article on the difference between political speeches and presentations, I came upon a sound bite during the week that throws further light on the issue. And it goes part of the way towards explaining, given the obstacles to integrity that they face, how politicians will try to sound sincere.

The sound bite in question was on the RTE lunchtime news last Thursday (July 7^th), the politician was Dennis Naughten, and the issue under discussion was the closing of A&E in Roscommon regional hospital – you may have heard the story.

Dennis Naughten refused to vote with his party on a bill to downgrade the A&E department to an ‘urgent care centre’. The TD himself explained, ‘There were firm commitments given before the election in writing to the people of Roscommon. I had campaigned on those issues in good faith and in all honesty, I couldn’t now tell the people that I was going back on those commitments.’

Then came the bit that caught my attention. The RTE reporter suggested that the decision to vote against the party could be seen as a selfish one, an irresponsible act that would damage the government that Naughten was elected to serve. The TD replied, ‘I have to try and do my best for the people I represent, my family and my community. I have to remember that I am a father – my three-year-old came into me this morning and the first thing she asked me was, “Daddy, is casualty going to close?” Now that’s the type of pressure that I and my family have been under over the last couple of weeks.’

If I were a cynic, I might question whether a three-year-old could really understand – or more to the point care about – the  downgrading of services in regional hospitals, even local ones. However, that wasn’t what intrigued me.

I am actually inclined to believe that the quoted remark was genuine. Why else, off the cuff, would an elected representative quote something that sounded, at best, irrelevant and, at worst, untrue. It is likely the child would have been given a simplified explanation of why her father was appearing on the news and would thus take in an interest in the outcome – was this thing closed or not? But what is interesting is the way even politicians reach for the familiar and the anecdotal when speaking off-script.

How many times have you heard guests on the radio say, ‘I was just telling your researcher’ or words to that effect. Obviously guests speak to the researchers before they go on air, but the listener doesn’t need to hear about this, surely. And yet, in a myriad of ways, we do the same thing in conversations all the time – ‘A friend of mine was telling me...’, ‘This guy...’, ‘My mother always said...’

The truth is that we don’t just exchange pieces of information when we tell stories, we exchange sponsored pieces of information. The person who tells the story, or who features in it, is the reason the story is interesting and has merit. Assertions without active agencies seem, by contrast, empty and trite, the difference between saying, ‘I believe...’ and ‘I know...sure didn’t it happen to me.’

The lesson is that you should include stories – relevant to the topic of the talk, of course – in every presentation that you give. Information is one thing but experience is much more valuable. It is this experience that you are selling when you give the presentation, the insight that bring the facts to life. The bare facts? – anyone can lay their hands on those.

On the first course that I ever gave, a woman made a short presentation on Puerto Rico. She talked us through its location, population, climate, culture and history, and at the end was asked the not unreasonable question, ‘Why did you choose this topic?’ She replied, ‘Oh, I was there for ten days last month.’ She might have mentioned that.

Politicians often try to use the story device in a calculated way. How often have you heard campaigning politicians say things like, ‘That’s not what voters are saying to me on the doorsteps,’ or more specifically, ‘I met a woman in Sligo town, only last week, and she was telling me...’ etc. It is important to note, by the way, that stories of this kind are impossible to refute.

Many people, particularly when presenting technical material, feel that it is inappropriate to include themselves, or stories relating to their own experiences, in the talk but this is about as wrong as you can get regarding how presentations work. When that woman came back from her holidays in Puerto Rico, I am sure the first question put to her was along the lines of, ‘How did you get on?’ and almost certainly not, ‘What is the capital city? What language do they speak? and, How much does a pint of beer cost?’ Well....maybe the last one.

I am currently interviewing people for a book on communication but finding experts is not easy because despite always championing the use of examples when explaining something, citing examples of good presenting is actually quite difficult to do.

There is a word association website and when you type in the word ‘presentation’, you get the following five words in return: display, feature, academy, show and speech. These are for any connotation of the word ‘presentation’ but if you ask someone to tell you what comes into their mind when they think specifically of an oral presentation (and I have done this) you will also get things like: podium, microphone, lecture, audience, spotlight and of course nerves.

Which all points to what is misleading in citing examples of good presenters. It is natural, when tackling the daunting task of speaking before a group of people, to look at others who have spoken in front of groups of people and done it well. It is also natural to look at the more famous exponents of the art but when you do this, you end up with examples like that of Barack Obama (or even Enda Kenny) speaking on College Green.

This, however, is a far cry from the presentations you will normally be asked to make. And I am not talking about the size of your audience, the fervour with which they greet you or the cost of the dress your wife will have to wear to make you look good on stage. A political speech is different to a presentation in a number of ways.

Firstly, it is recorded. You have to be able to stand over every word you say so the content has to be set out in advance and thus read word for word. Secondly, it rarely has a tangible aim. Instead, it is usually part of an ongoing process of garnering support or simply saving face. Thirdly, it is often riddled with lies. And I am not being cynical when I say this but the pragmatism of having to toe the party line or simply observe political correctness, curtails what any politician is allowed to say. By contrast, the best thing about a presentation is that it can be honest and convincing. If you allow it to be, that is.

The key thing to focus on when preparing for a presentation is not the setting (podium, microphone, that damn, nerve-inducing audience) but on the intellectual process that is taking place. Imagine you had to communicate with just one person in that audience and construct a plan based on that. Then work outwards.

If you do it this way, you will come to realise that a lot of the presentation trappings are not much help, namely: a room of banked seats that discourages interaction, a microphone that turns you into a newsreader, a podium which hides you and restricts motion, a laser pointer that is more irritating and less helpful than a wasp on the screen.

As an example of how a presentation can follow the lead of a functional conversation rather than a political speech, consider my recent purchase of an iPod docking station (a speaker for an iPod, basically).

There was the expert (the shop assistant) talking to an interested audience (albeit an audience of only one). There was an aim to the communication (to enable me to make a decision) and the expert chose only that portion of his knowledge which was relevant to this aim instead of filling endless slides with listed information. There were no slides either, of course. There were examples, demonstrations, anecdotes, visual aids and interaction. And best of all, it had a conclusion – I got something.

This short trip to the shops had all the ingredients of a presentation and provides a more useful example of the process than Barak Obama did on College Green. Which brings me back to where I started.

For the book that I am writing, I am looking for people who are famous communicators (essentially good at explaining stuff) or are associated with enterprises (publications, museums, TV channels, radio programmes) that are renowned for the same thing. And I would like the scope to be as broad as possible – I am not just looking in the areas of science and engineering. So if you have any suggestions at all, please let me know.

And when you are giving your next presentation, focus on what is going on in your head and in the heads of the audience, and not just on the auditorium in which it is taking place. Be a shop-assistant, not a head of state, because when I go to buy an iPod docking station, I don’t want Barak Obama or Enda Kenny wasting my time with oratory. What do they know about music, anyway?